Mazurka in A minor (“Notre Temps”)

The fourth of Chopin’s seven Mazurkas in A minor was written in 1840 and first published two years later by Schott’s of Mainz in an album called Notre Temps - along with pieces by Czerny, Kalliwoda, Rosenheim, Thalberg, Kalkbrenner, Bertini, Wolff, Kontski, Osborne, Hertz and, rather surprisingly, Mendelssohn. In that largely virtuoso company, Chopin’s Mazurka in A minor must have seemed peculiarly severe. In fact, it is severe, even in comparison with Chopin’s other mazurkas in A minor. Beginning as primly as any baroque minuet, it only gradually liberates the left hand to pursue an obbligato line curving expressively downwards under the strictly chordal texture in the right hand. It then recaptures the left hand in the A major middle section where, except for a half a dozen enterprising bars in the very centre of the piece, it proceeds in parallel octaves with the melodic line in the right hand. Expressive freedom is restored to the left hand in the reprise of the first section - a little earlier than before but only within the limits already set.